AWESOME movie for any TEXAS history or ALAMO fans! Being a TEXAS history buff, I would've liked for the movie to have been longer. There was way too much material that was edited out, which will prevent any non-TEXAS history fan from following the "complete" story and truly understanding and respecting what the fight for TEXAS freedom was all about.

Never been a Billy Bob fan, but he did an outstanding job portraying the real David Crockett!! The movie does an excellent job of dispelling myths, and showing what truly happened. This movie is the most historically accurate account of what actually happened.

This film reminds me of a passage from McKee's Screenwriting book in which he says, paraphrased, "actable dialog, some nice moments now and then, and fine descriptions but frankly the story sucks. Exposition driven scenes, unrelated soft tensions that could become interesting subplots don't come together, a plot the snags and hangs limp through much of the narrative ect." That's basically how I feel about the Alamo; every now and then there was a nice moment, mostly surrounding Thornton's Crockett, but the story sucks. Everything has is limp and tension free energy that kills anything the movie was doing, and I was bored out of my mind through most it. I can't believe an Alamo movie bored me; what a crushing disappointment this was. The main problem I think is the film tried to cram to much stuff into the story, and ended up with a very dissociated screenplay.

Blah, just blah.

Again, a 0=F, not worthless.

American pies films.

I don't find the kids (Jim, Stifler ect) all that funny; maybe a chuckle now and then, but that's about it; through that might be because I can't really relate to the "party" scene that most of the first two films exist in. I also find Stifler annoying as hell; more so in the first two then the third. I do however find the films kinda romantic, and Eugene Levy can still crack me up big time. That's why I like the third film the best; it has less kids, and more Levy (with the great Willard added, which helps a lot too).

Also, Jim's pratfalls are always golden.

Hellboy

My single biggest problem with this film is the, pardon the pun, the hellishly anti-climatical last five minutes. It feels like it's from an entirely different movie. I like how Lovecraftian the film is. That's the best part I think; the creepy atmosphere twisted visuals, and wacky characters all make the film better than its clich

The history of the new production of The Alamo is almost as storied as the event it portrays. It first started out as Ron Howard's directorial follow-up to his Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind. It had all the earmarks of a great film: a big budget three-hour epic that as I recall would have starred Russell Crowe (as who here I really have no idea). But then the bottom fell out of just about everything. Ron Howard went on to do The Missing (bad), while Russell Crowe went onto Master and Commander (very good).

The semi-aborted remnants we get are just as expensive, but also singularly uninspired and frankly, just boring. The film opens setting up the major characters in the battle. The movie goes to great lengths to establish that legends like Davey Crockett and Jim Bowie were all normal, very flawed people. Unfortunately, simply saying they're flawed without really showing it doesn't do very much to make them compelling at all. By far the bright spot is Billy Bob Thorton's performance as Davey Crockett. The famed congressman wasn't particularly looking for a fight when he came to Texas and he's quick to tell people he's not all that his legend is cracked up to be. Dennis Quaid is good, but underutilized as General Sam Houston; his character relegated to the sidelines of the story.

Structurally, the film disturbingly brought to mind Pearl Harbor, another mediocre attempt at a historical epic by Disney. There's a long and tedious build-up to the depressing main battle, followed by what feels like a tagged on attempt to end the film on a feel-good note so that the audience won't feel like they sat through a movie where everyone is slaughtered. Even worse, the siege of the Alamo is nowhere near as visually impressive as the attack on Pearl Harbor in Bay's film.

Claims that the film is the most historically accurate take on the battle are fairly well earned. A siege is a terribly drawn out affair, with long spells of nothing punctuated by violent interludes. So in that regard, one could say that The Alamo excels at that perfectly. Unfortunately, that doesn't make the film very interesting. There is also an unsettling uniformity to the side of the Mexicans. I'm no expert in Mexican history, but the portrayal of Santa Ana struck me as pretty two-dimensional. He preens around, beds local beauties and generally ignores his senior officer's opinions all with a thin smirk on his face. Santa Ana came across more like a James Bond villain.

I'd say one of the few gutsy moves the film makes is a scene where Bowie makes it clear he is keeping his assistant because he's his property simple as that. The other is a scene that stems from recent debate that perhaps Crockett survived the onslaught, only to be executed later. However, that scene ends up feeling rather silly in its execution.

Technically, the film is just sort of...there. It's all rather average. The music is quite generic. Art direction, make-up and costumes are all rather spot on, but the cinematography is rather bleeched out. The movie isn't very colorful and at times just seems dark and blurry. I'm not talking a clear shot that's undergone digital shading. I'm talking about just plain dark.

The only real battle to stir any emotion is the final assault. John Lee Hancock's direction lacks any real flair except to just document the action, which is also rather bloodless. I don't think anyone even died in the first half of the movie. Two shots did stand out though: one a shot from the point of view of a flying cannon ball and another a high crane shot encompassing the whole mission surrounded. Those two shots were just a hint of what this film could have been. Alas, it isn't.

It's possible that Hancock's original three-hour cut could improve matters, perhaps explaining just what did happen to those few women and children who stayed at the mission? Or how out of all of Texas, Crockett just happens upon the Alamo? Or perhaps most importantly, place the whole political situation in a clearer light as pre-battle history was quite glazed over in the beginning.

As I left the theater fairly unsatisfied, I recalled the pair of friends from John Wayne's version:

I decided to see this film in order to get a historical perspective on what happened at the Alamo (in San Antonio, Texas.) Being a Disney film, however, it unfortunately wallowed too much in sentimentality to be a must-see production.

You do get a sense of the hopelessness of the Americans holding out against the Mexican Army, but that's not how the films ends. Sure enough, in order to attempt to be a crowd-pleaser, the Americans have to end up in victory.

Bill Bob Thornton plays Davey Crockett who just a good ol' boy known as a legendary modern day hero. Even the Mexicans know this. Like the Mexican General, the Crockett character grins too much for his own good.

Jason Patric plays the famous knife fighter Jim Bowie. You're just waiting for the classic Crocodile Dundee line, "That's not a knife. This is a knife" when Bowie practically pulls out a machete. His character is dour and not very likely.

Overall, this film would have benefited from being about an hour shorter.

The Alamo is a remake of the 1960 John Wayne movie based on historical events. Originally I didn't want to watch it, I didn't know why to watch it. I think, the movie wasn't promoted heavily enough. When the movie started running I didn't even have an idea of what it would be about. If it had been promoted well enough, I would have had a direction already at least. Not knowing old movies well I can't rely on that kind of knowledge. The filmmakers were very disappointed of the failure of The Alamo when it made just about $9.2 million on its opening weekend. The costs for this film were about $140 million, which they're unlikely to recoup already opening so badly. Though the only reason in the end why I watched the movie was that it was flopping so bad. I had to check out whether it got punished for nothing or for a reason. I think, the reason is - it's simply boring. I do not even know why the movie cost that much money. They must have blown it into the air with the bombs in the movie. Funny thing is, if you watch until the first third of the movie is over, and then check back in the beginning of the third third of the movie it's exactly the same situation (same bombs thrown, same fights, same atmosphere), and you would not even miss the second third of the movie if you didn't know there was one. But I don't want to be too harsh and won't give it a really bad rating. At least the movie wasn't dumb, like some others that were released this year already.

I went and saw the movie, already being a seasoned Alamo and war movie buff. I thorougly enjoyed it. The Alamo took the famous battle from a whole new perspective. It actually cares about realism! The action sequencs were low on gore, but still breathtaking. The dialogue and character development were exceptional. The only argument against this movie that I can see are the pacing. The way it was paced just kind of made it seem less "epic" and according to some critics: overly predicatable.

Predictable? :rolleyes:

The Alamo, regardless of its minor flaws, is a very well-made film. The prodcution team put a spectacular amount of effort in it to film. The ENTIRE movie was shot on location on the largest outdoor set ever created. The set itself was located only a few miles from the actual San Antionio. Billy Bob Thornton's preformance is also quite spectacular and definately Oscar worthy.

Too bad so many of the critics gave it lackluster reviews. With an average rating of 5/10 and a Cream of the Crop of 5.5/10, the Alamo can hold its own against it's harshest critics. But for an Alamo buff like me, an 8/10 is more like it.

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Hello fellow Solarians,
I felt its needed to do a blog so that everyone can read and know what is going on. As you all know, for a few months there had been issues with imarobot randomly muting users for no reason. We had found that randomly chosen (some more than others) who comment/reply with 200+ characters got muted. It took admins time but they found the root to the problem.
This will be rectified at the end of the week if not a bit later.
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Lately Solarmovie has been plagued by the epidemic of people spoiling episodes / movies on the review comment page and I feel this needs to be addressed, please be aware that this is against the [https://www.solarmovie.is/rule...] and such activity will warrant a mute / ban depending on the severity of the spoiler! It does not matter even if you place SPOILER at the top of your review to warn people, it is forbidden and against the rules. A warning will only be Issued ONCE, if you continue to spoil a Mute / Ban could be enforced. Some small talk is ok, but mostly it is for reviews only, if you wish to talk deep details about episodes / movies please take it to the forum, as such talk is not prohibited there..
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Hello fellow Solarians,
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The kind of film the "sci fi thinker" type can really dig in.
I had actually already seen it but with a different world view back then than the one I now have. I won't deny the obvious quality of the craftsmanship but today I resent the underlying message that promotes accepting supernatural unclean unions with entities that violate you to begin with. Not keen at all on the soft transhumanism push either.
I know very few will get what I mean. To those who do, hang in there.
7.6/10 because it's a good cinematographic piece.

I never watched this original season before I got hooked on season 2 on wards and I was told one was just a set up that stuck to the book it didn't effect the other seasons. It's nice to see Andrew Lincolns work before The Walking Dead but I have type casted him in that role now. I expected Zombies to show up and Daryl and Michone to rescue him lol. This ep was good I enjoyed it.

I have my own DVD copy of this. And toss it in the player every now and then for the funzies of it.
Worth watching? Sure, why not if you haven't seen it before and you happen to like cars.
"Want to speedily get back your stolen corvette? Use the Force, Luke, use the Force."
And when you see the corvette, you'll understand why the baddies wanted to steal it.